William avert sweet



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KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS:

That I, WILLIAM Avant' SWEET, of the city of Syracuse, county of Onondaga, State of New York, have invented certain new and' useful improvements in the Manufacture of Rails for Railroads; and I do hereby decla-re the following tobe a sufficiently clear and exact description of the same, so that any one skilled in such matters may, by the aid of the accompanying drawings, which form a partof this specification, readily use my invention.

I may premise, however, the remark, that of the three varieties of rails now in common use, to wit, iron rail, east-steel rail, andsteel-plated or faced rail, neither seems to be all that is desired. The iron rail is not durable. The cast-steel rail is not only costly, butis liable to break in a cold climate, and the welding of iron and steel is' so difficult, and the unequal expansion aud contraction so destructive, that the success of the steelfaced or plated rail has not been such as to recommend it suiiciently to induce its general use. I would also state thatv I am aware that Thomas S. Blair took out a patent, No. 38,548, May 19, 1863, in which he claims a railroad rail, part of steel and par-t of iron, without welding, by carbonizing a portion of the top of the rail. The impracticability of this scheme will be apparent to all who are conversant with the process of manufacturing railroad rails. I am also aware that a pile of iron bars has been rolled into a rail and then converted into steel; but this method is not found very useful, as the bar of blistered steel comes from the converting or cementing oven almost as brittle as cast iron, and, as far as strength is concerned, is worthless for the purposes intended. My invention differs essentially from both of'these, and consists in forming what I term a composite rail"`in the manner hereinafter described, the chief object of which invention is to construct a rail the cost of which shall not greatly exceed that of iron; that shall possess the requisite hardness to insure durability; that shall be sufficiently fibrous in its nature to combine strength with elasticity.

It is well known that while a steel bar cannot be effectually welded to one of iron, such Welding may be made perfect and permanent provided the iron bar has its surface first converted into steel in any of the usual methods. 'It is desirable that the tread or upper surface of the rail should be of steel, while the base or lower portion of the rail should be principally of iron.

I am aware that Gustave Simons obtained an English patent, in 1862, for the manufacture of plates, rods, axle-tires, and other articles that are required to be partly of iron and partly of steel, by welding together steel bars or plates and iron bars or plates, having first carbonized the surfaces ofthe iron bars or plates. This involves, to some extent, the same principle that I now propose 'to apply to the manufacture of railroad rails and which rails may in this manner be so constructed that the upper surface or tread shall be mainly of steel, and the lower portion or base shall be mainly of iron.

I propose, therefore, to make rails from bars or flats of iron, the surfaces of Whichhave been carbonized in the usual way. These Hats are then made into a pile or fagot, and-rolled, in the usual way, into a rail. I prefer making the upper lat of the pile much thinner than those that are-below it, so that't'his upper dat -would become converted into steel throughout,vwhile the other'bars, though subjected to the same process, were still mostly iron.

The formation of the composite rail may be carried out in many different ways, but the method I adopt, and which has proved perfectly successful, will be readily understood by reference to the drawings, in which- Figure 1 represents a section of a pile of bars, with shading to represent the outer surfaces,shown at a a a a a a, converted into steel.

Figures 2 to 14 inclusive represent sections of a bar as it would Vappear after passing through each of the successive passes in the rolls; and A Fignrel represents a piece of rail when finished.

Like letters and shading refer to corresponding parts in all the figures.

The bars of iron being rolled out of a uniform width or nearly so, and of different thicknesses, varying' with the different degrees of hardness required, are placed in a convertingoven, und the cement-ation carried on until the thinnest bars are converted nearly or completely through. Thiswill leave the centreof the thicker bars in their original state, as practice proves that the carbon penetrates the larger bars hardly as far as it does the smaller ones in the same length of time. A pile made of such bars or flats, graded as to thickness from the thickest at bottom to the thinnest at top, will, when rolled, make a rail with a steel top and alternate layers of iron and steel from that down, the proportion of theiron greatly preponderating in the bottom flange, or where tenacity is most required and particular hardness is unnecessary.

By reference to fig, l it will be seen that all the surfaces to be welded together are of steehnnd in no case willthe line of weld and 'the line between the iron and steel be in the sra-me platee. As blister steel weldsns readily as iron, and better than cast or Bessemer cast steel, and very much better than either cast or Bessemer` cast steel with iron, the Working of the materials when prepared as above specified is a much more reliable process than that of forming the ordinary steel-faced-or plated mil, and the liability to tearing apa-rt the different layers of iron and steel, by either working or expansion and contraction, is evidently entirely avoided.

'Having thus briefly described the nature of my invention, what I'clziim, and desire to secure by Letters Patent, is

1. An improved pile, substantially such as herein described.

2. A railroad ril, made of a pile,l substantialiy such as that herein described. Y

WILLIAM A. SWEET.

Witnesses WM.v R. BROOKS,- J oHN E.. SWEET. 

